


Certain and Constant

by orphan_account



Category: Bones (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Dialogue Heavy, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-03-06 06:41:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13405611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Death puts life into perspective. -- or: a conversation on the night after Vincent's death.





	Certain and Constant

**Author's Note:**

> No one is surprised I wrote this. Not even me lmao. I'm late to the party, but I had a good time with it.

* * *

 

They lie together for what feels like hours, the room silent in the night save for her quiet sobs, whispered into his shoulder like secrets. Maybe they are secrets—very few people have seen her cry, and never like this, into someone else’s shirt and in someone else’s home, long after being woken by her racing thoughts and the memory of a ringing phone and shattering glass and a panicked, breathy plea of  _please don’t make me leave._

“I wanted him to stay,” Brennan says, once her breathing has normalized and her voice has settled.

“I know you did,” says Booth, his hold on her as steady as ever.

She is quiet again for a moment, staring with gaze unfocused at the lamp on the bedside table. “He really was my favorite. I like—  _liked_ how intelligent he was.”

“Yeah. Sometimes he needed a little nudge to help him focus, but he was a smart kid. A good kid.”

“Do you think he heard me say that? I should’ve— I wish I’d told him before— _this_.”

“I’m sure he knew, Bones.”

“No. He didn’t know. You can never know what someone thinks unless they tell you.”

“Then I’m sure he heard you.”

She takes a breath, ready to protest how that isn’t something he could possibly know for a fact, but she’s there again, on the platform, watching Vincent bleed out and beg to stay—and she’s there again, in her childhood home, pushing away her mother’s touch, her concern, her love, and walking away from her for the last time.

“Hey. Bones, look at me,” says Booth, putting his fingers beneath her chin, tipping her head back so their eyes meet. “He heard you, all right? When it mattered the most, he knew you cared about him.”

It’s so easy for him to say that, she thinks, with his faith in a mythical god who keeps track of humans’ deeds on a cosmic balance sheet. It’s so easy for him, and for the first time she can think of, she is jealous of him for it. Science has never failed her, and it never will, but it is not capable of the impossible. It does not speak to the rightness or wrongness of an action, or to the irrational impulses of the metaphorical human heart.

Gripping his shirt tighter, she narrows her eyes against the sting of fresh tears, and shakes her head. “I waited too long. I was almost too late.” After everything that’s happened this past year, she still hasn’t learned to appreciate what’s in front of her when it’s there. “I didn’t… _listen_ , to the universe. I— I thought we were safe in the lab, which is irrational. _Nowhere_ is safe—”

“It’s the safest place you know here. Nobody thought they were in danger there.”

“And now someone is _dead_  because we were careless!”

“Hey—listen, it’s not careless to believe you’re safe in a place with security as tight as the Jeffersonian. This isn’t your fault, okay? If anything—”

“I want to kiss you.”

Like always, he is caught off guard by how far she is ahead of him, how quickly her mind treads the path from one thought to the next. He pulls his head back, frowning at her, as if by looking at her, he’ll see how the sentences connect. Maybe he will find the answer that way, in a manner she never could. Whether his “gut” is educated guesswork or proficiency in reading body language, he is, in fact, capable of understanding people far better than anyone she knows. It’s part of why she loves him; the realization makes her heart beat faster.

“Bones,” he says. “I— You’re hurting. I don’t think— This is—”

“I know what I’m asking. I’m being rational, and I’m being irrational. We agreed that—”

“I know what we agreed, but Vincent was _just murdered_ —”

“And next time it could be you! Or me. Or _anyone_. And if we keep putting _us_ off, then—” She stops short, breathing deep against a sob threatening to choke her. “Then we would die with regret. I don’t want any more regrets.”

There will never be a day she doesn’t, to some degree, regret her last conversation with her mother. Obstinacy and pride have so badly tainted her last memory of Christine Brennan that it hurts even though she knows, logically, that she can’t be blamed for acting her age at the time, and that she could never have known she’d never see her mother alive again. The lack of fault, however, does not take away the emotional pain the memory brings her, and though she knows it will one day hurt less, the same is true of those last seconds with her intern.

“I love you,” she says, her voice steady on the words, “and I almost missed my chance once already. I am not going to lose you.”

There is a moment where she thinks she sees what he does, the words he might say but doesn’t. Experience tells her he likes to give reassurances that are impossible to promise to begin with, impossible to keep. He probably wants to say that she won’t lose him at all, but she is certain he knows what she'd say in protest: that’s not something he can know, much less guarantee.

He looks at her and thinks better of it, she believes, his frown changing into a look that is gentle and concerned and makes her want to stay in his arms forever. Then he lifts a hand to her face, tucking her hair behind her ear even though it’s been there this whole time. His thumb lingers, stroking her cheek, and he says, softly, “Are you sure?”

She knows, then, that a kiss will lead to more, that they’ll do what they didn’t seven years ago, that she won’t regret it at all. She knows he is thinking of it, too, and that he loves her too much to do anything without her express consent. She knows, and she loves him for this and so much more, so much that it hurts and makes her throat tighten and her eyes sting with tears.

She nods, then says, “yes,” without the slightest doubt or hesitation. She has never before been more certain about something immeasurable, and she knows, somehow, that she never will be about anything else. Not physics, not math, not bones—love becomes the constant in her life, and she never, ever regrets it.


End file.
